page_title: Berkeley Plantation
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Berkeley Plantation / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Berkeley Plantation, Shrine marking spot of 1st Thanksgiving in America, in 1619
context_page_description: Berkeley Plantation, one of the first plantations in America, comprises about 1,000 acres on the banks of the James River on State Route 5 in Charles City County, Virginia. Berkeley Plantation was originally called Berkeley Hundred and named after the Berkeley Company of England. In 1726, Benjamin Harrison IV built on the estate one of the first three-story brick mansions in Virginia. It is the ancestral home to two Presidents of the United States: William Henry Harrison, his grandson, and Benjamin Harrison his great-great-grandson. It is now a museum property, open to the public.
  Among the many American "firsts" that occurred at Berkeley Plantation are:
  First time Army bugle call "Taps" played: July 1862, by bugler Oliver W. Norton; the melody was written at Harrison's Landing, the plantation's old wharf, by Norton and then General Daniel Butterfield.
  American whiskey was originally distilled at Berkeley Plantation in 1620.
context_section_description: On December 4, 1619, a group of 38 English settlers arrived at  Berkeley Hundred, about 8,000 acres (32 km²) on the north bank of the James River near Herring Creek in an area then known as Charles Cittie (sic). It was named for one of the original founders, Richard Berkeley, a member of the Berkeley family of Gloucestershire, England. It was about 20 miles upstream from Jamestown, where the first permanent settlement of the Colony of Virginia was established on May 14, 1607.
  The group's London Company charter required that the day of arrival be observed as a "day of thanksgiving" to God. On that first day, Captain John Woodlief held a service pursuant to the charter which specified, "Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.".
  During the Indian Massacre of 1622, nine of the settlers at Berkeley Hundred were killed, as well as about a third of the entire population of the Virginia Colony. The Berkeley Hundred site and other outlying locations were abandoned as the colonists withdrew to Jamestown and other more secure points. In 1634, Charles Cittie became part of the first eight shires of Virginia, as Charles City County, one of the oldest in the United States, and is located along Virginia State Route 5, which runs parallel to the river's northern borders past sites of many of the James River Plantations between the colonial capital city of Williamsburg (now the site of Colonial Williamsburg) and the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia at Richmond.
  After several decades, the site of Berkeley Hundred became the property of Theodorick Bland of Westover.  A portion of the Berkeley Hundred patent was purchased from descendant Giles Bland by Benjamin Harrison III.  His son Benjamin Harrison IV built the three story brick mansion that became the seat of the Harrison family, one of the First Families of Virginia. 
  Using bricks fired on the Berkeley plantation, Benjamin Harrison IV built a Georgian-style two-story brick mansion on a hill overlooking the James River in 1726.  Harrison's son, Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the American Declaration of Independence and a Governor of Virginia, was born at Berkeley Plantation, as was his son William Henry Harrison, a war hero in the Battle of Tippecanoe, governor of Indiana Territory, and ninth President of the United States. Berkeley would later earn a distinction shared only with Peacefield in Quincy, Massachusetts, as the ancestral home for two United States Presidents, though this connection is tenuous, as William Henry Harrison's grandson, the 23rd president, Benjamin Harrison, was born and reared in North Bend, Ohio, and his father, John Scott Harrison, was born in Vincennes, Indiana, while his father (William Henry Harrison) was the first territorial governor of the Indiana Territory.
  Using poor farming techniques, Benjamin Harrison VIII bankrupted the plantation and it was foreclosed on by a local bank and the family evicted. 
  During the American Civil War, Union troops occupied Berkeley Plantation, and President Abraham Lincoln twice visited there in the summer of 1862 to confer with Gen. George B. McClellan. The Harrisons were unable to regain possession of the plantation after the war, and it was rented out by the bank from time to time to tenant farmers and the mansion was eventually used as a barn, falling into such disrepair that it was uninhabitable.
caption: Shrine to the annual "thanksgivings to God" Berkeley settlers were mandated to conduct by their London Company charter upon establishing what became the Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia, 1619
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